Trump having dinner at a restaurant near the White House to promote his Washington crackdown

By WILL WEISSERT WASHINGTON AP President Donald Trump is having dinner Tuesday night at a seafood restaurant near the White House promoting his deployment of the National Guard and federalizing the police force in an effort to crack down on crime in the nation s capital Related Articles Plans in the works for Korean workers detained in raid to go home while fear lingers for residents Chicagoans change routines as immigration crackdown looms A few carry passports and avoid stores Alex Jones asks U S Supreme Court to hear appeal of billion Sandy Hook judgment Supreme Court to fleetly consider if President Donald Trump has power to impose sweeping tariffs Chief Justice Roberts keeps in place Trump funding freeze that threatens billions in foreign aid His motorcade speeding the short distance to Joe s Seafood Prime Steak Stone Crab on th Street in the northwestern quadrant of the city follows weeks of the president boasting about mobilizing federal bureaucrats and the military that he says have made Washington a safe zone Chosen restaurants have communicated drops in reservations since Trump first informed the federal crackdown on Aug while there have been frequent street protests decrying his actions Increased military and police presence also has occasionally sparked standoffs between residents and personnel in normally quiet neighborhoods Trump has nonetheless revealed repeatedly that he s spoken to friends who tell him local restaurants are full and that people have noticed a drop in crime He says he s also heard that people appreciate crews working to remove homeless encampments as part of the crackdown The president had suggested previously that he might be heading out to dinner for a firsthand look I think it s something we could consider doing Love to do it Trump advised reporters last week in the Oval Office when petitioned about venturing out to dinner beyond the White House I love the White House food but after a while I could see going to a nice restaurant It s safe Trump rarely dines away from the White House when he s in Washington And those outings have gotten even less common since he sold the hotel bearing his name a inadequate blocks away which was a key meeting point for administration executives and supporters during his first term The White House disclosed Tuesday that there had been nearly arrests since Trump first reported the Washington crackdown on Aug In addition to Washington Trump deployed the National Guard to Los Angeles in June and has threatened to send troops to other largely Democratic cities including Baltimore New Orleans and Chicago where state and local agents already are bracing for operations to sharply increase immigration enforcement On Saturday Trump posted a parody image from Apocalypse Now featuring a ball of flames as helicopters zoom over the lakefront and skyline of Chicago the nation s third-largest city I love the smell of deportations in the morning Trump wrote on his social media site Chicago about to find out why it s called the Department of WAR In the post Trump offered no details beyond the label Chipocalypse Now a play on the title of Francis Ford Coppola s dystopian film set in the Vietnam War in which a character says I love the smell of napalm in the morning That post came after last week when Trump signed an executive order seeking to rename the Defense Department as the Department of War even after months of campaigning to be considered for the Nobel Peace Prize The renaming requires congressional approval In his own post in response Democratic Illinois Gov JB Pritzker called Trump a wannabe dictator He has joined state and city leaders and several Chicago residents in decrying the idea of a federal crackdown as unnecessary